pretty food

Mike and I have really got this sushi thing down now. Once you discover the magic of your local asian market scene, then it's really quite inexpensive and easy! Our core ingredients: salmon (sushi grade), tuna (sushi grade), cream cheese, cucumbers, scallions, sirachi sauce, and some sort of fruit. This time around we used pear. You can use anything really. I've even made banana sushi...I thought it was great!

Basically, what you would spend a good $75 on at a Japanese restaurant you can do at home for less than $20. It's that easy!

all in due time

there's a time and a place
where the mundane will seem big
where the inevitable will take you by surprise
where impossible happens.
where you think you know, but don't
where the shininess erodes,
where thoughts become actions.
where familiar becomes strange
where the fun becomes boring
where the mirror reflects changes
where the hard stuff gets easy

-Summer Richards, 2/26/08

the thoughtful prose of good light...

Happy Valentine's day

Happy valentine's day.

I hope you have lots of loveliness all around you.(Mike got cupcakes)

the sad parts

For the little fifteen year old girl who was pronouned braindead yesterday.

so young for this bed,
so young for these tubes
so young for the lifeforce
that’s drained out of you.
your body in the middle
of a family that’s broken
They go through the motions
and don’t speak the unspoken.
it's hard to believe
that beneath this warm skin
your sweet little face
will not smile again.

little cherub girl
you never knew me
but in a career full of sadness
there’s a spot where you’ll be.

-Summer Richards, 2/14/08

Interpretations

"See. Looky here..."
She shows him her picture,
a conglomeration of colors,
an abstract festival of lines and curves.
"See I'm the setting sun,and you're the starry sky,
it's all right here,don't you see?"

He nodded and gave her shoulder a tug.
He long ago resigned to acknowledge
that every meaning had multiple interpretations.

-Summer Richards, 2/11/08

Great news!

I've just learned that my 83 year old grandmother and her husband will be flying to Colorado for my graduation from nursing school in May. This is very special indeed. My grandmother, Nannie as I've always known her as, lives in Camden, Maine with her new husband.

A note about that: Nannie and Harry were high school sweethearts and reconnected when they were 80 years old. They fell in love again and were married just a couple of years ago! If that is not the sweetest love story ever then I don't know what is! Soon after they were married he experienced a series of strokes. They have left him blind and nearly deaf. But my grandmother, also a nurse, is a strong and bold woman. She has taken care of him and their very rural household, even in the throws of the extreme weather that Maine gives them. She is the 83 year old out chopping wood and shoveling snow!

With the presence of my grandmother at graduation, we will be three generations of nurses. My mother also a nurse, my grandmother, a nurse anesthetist, and myself. I am proud of all three of us. My mother and grandmother have been constant sources of inspiration throughout my life. They are strong women indeed.

today

you saw it here and here only.

My new favorite craft to do is decoupage. We have this old country looking mirror that I thought I'd "redo". It was great. I used all kinds of Jack Kerouac/beat generation pictures and laboriously cut, pasted and sealed them onto this mirror. I ran into some unforeseen air bubble issues so I turned the mirror over to step on the edges to make the pictures adhere better. So you can imagine my disappointment when I'm sitting on my little labor of love and hear "CRACK".

Shit.

This little post is homage to what could have been one the coolest mirrors ever.

Family

This weekend Mike and I flew to California for my mom's 50th. Mom, my brother and his family, Mike and I all stayed in a cabin in Tahoe. It was a unique experience for my family. We don't do get togethers very often and when we do we 1) re-live/remember former [unresolved] issues, and 2) become keenly aware of how life has changed the dynamics of our family. But at the risk of writing too much family goobily goo I will just state this: it was a lovely weekend full of challenges and cherished moments, a symbolical reference to the state of our family.

Our lives are bonded with the rich memories
of traditions of our own unique culture.
It is only with them
that I can speak in the language that I knew
as a little girl.

In life there is continual renewal.
Every cell in my body has died,
replaced by another,
and another.
The child of my past is unrecognizable to me now.

At some point in the process you must let go
of the hands that have guided you
and steer the road on your own,
trusting not in the directions,
but in the intuition.

Each has there own journey,
yet my heart overflows
when I am reunited with those
that have walked with me for awhile.

--February 7, 2008